The present invention relates to recordings for audio or visual information. The recording of the invention may be used to convey information in a user-interactive format. The invention also relates to recordings used in conjunction with play mats or other toys.
Audio and visual information is typically recorded and replayed sequentially. Since their inception, phonograph records have been designed and manufactured for sequential music and information delivery. Numerous examples are known in which a continuous spiral groove is cut in the surface of the disk record, generally beginning near the perimeter of the disk, and spiraling inward, to a point relatively near the center of the disk. At that point, the spiral groove becomes a circular groove, called a lock groove. When a stylus is placed near the perimeter of the record, the stylus follows the spiral groove of the record, until it reaches this lock groove. In the lock groove, the stylus follows the circle around the record indefinitely, until the stylus is physically lifted from the groove.
In many of the records marketed today, a standard twelve inch diameter record disk is designed to be played at 331/3 revolutions per minute and may include a number of musical selections or other segments of information, which selections are designed to be played in sequence. The record includes a single groove having modulated (recorded) lengths corresponding to the musical selections. A length of unmodulated or silent groove separates adjacent selections, so that the stylus, as it follows the groove, plays the recorded segment, then has a period of silence, then plays the following band. The phonograph record then has a plurality of concentric bands or rings, each corresponding to one of the selections. A narrower ring of dead, or silent, space separates adjacent bands.
Another method of recording multiple segments on one side of a phonograph record is described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,703,241, issued Mar. 1, 1955 to H. C. Abramson. This patent describes a phonograph record in which several spiral grooves are recorded parallel each other, each beginning near the perimeter of the record, and spiraling parallel to each other in toward the center of the record, until they reach a common circular lock groove.
The record of the Abramson reference is used to record a story having several segments. Each side of each record has several interchangeable segments of the story, each recorded in one of the parallel spiral grooves. The sides of the records are played consecutively, with each side being played once. Which of the parallel spiral grooves is played on each side depends upon where the stylus is placed around the perimeter of the record, and is generally a random function. This configuration for the record requires that each recorded segment on each side of each record begin and end so as to coordinate with all of the segments on the preceding and following sides. The beginning of each must fit with all the endings from the previous side, and the ending of each must fit with all the beginnings on the following side. This limitation substantially restricts the story lines that may be recorded.
A phonograph record having sequential recorded information segments pressed on the record in a nonsequential arrangement is known. The record has segment 1 of the recording on the first (outer) portion of side 1 of the record. The recording at the end of segment 1 instructs the listener to turn the record over and listen to side 2, and a lock groove is provided at the end of this first segment on side 1. At the end of the second segment, recorded on the entire side 2, the instructions tell the listener to again flip the record and listen to segment 3 on the inner portion of side 1. The recorded material is thus played sequentially. This arrangement is made to provide approximately 20 uninterrupted minutes of recording for segment 2.
Some systems, such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,170,832, issued Oct. 16, 1979, to Kurt Zimmerman, include a method of interactively conveying information recorded on video tape. Similar systems are known that use audio tape. These systems use different tracks on the magnetic video or audio tape for different segments of recorded information. The tracks are selected by the playback machine in response to user selection through a keyboard. The machines used to replay the tapes are expensive because of the complicated mechanisms necessary to select and playback the appropriate track of the tape.
Laser disks also are used to store and replay video or audio information. The selection of segments on the disk is by microcomputer control incorporating a dedicated program that acts in response to user input through a "joystick" or a keyboard. Playback machines incorporating this technology are also complicated and expensive.
A need exists for a nonsequential or interactive recording that uses limited technology, is inexpensive, simple to use, and uses inexpensive, uncomplicated playback equipment.